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Goddess of Atvatabar

<h2>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2> <h2>THE GARDEN OF TANJE.</h2> A series of banquets and other entertainments followed each other during our stay at the palace of Tanje. The goddess had held frequent interviews with the professors and myself regarding the external sphere, and had examined our maps and charts with the greatest curiosity. His majesty did not take nearly so much interest in our revelations as the goddess, being inert and prosaic in character. <div> <ANTIMG class="figright" src="images/image_116_01.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="174" alt="The Lilasure." title="" /> <ANTIMG class="figright" src="images/image_116_02.jpg" width-obs="233" height-obs="144" alt="The Lilasure." title="" /></div> On the morning of the fourth day of our stay at the palace of Tanje I received a visit from the grand chamberlain Cleperelyum, with a command from the goddess to meet her in her boudoir. Cleperelyum led me to the sacred apartment, which, when I entered, was vacant. The walls were models of decorative architecture, the panels being filled with silk tapestry of a pale yellow-green hue, the mouldings being ivory-white. The panelled frieze was filled with figures in violet and gold, and sea-green upholstery covered couch and divan, while the draperies were silks of cream and blue. It was a luxurious retreat. The carpet was a silk rug, soft as a bed of rose leaves, with a broad border in tones of green, violet and white. Presently the goddess entered with a winning smile on her features. She was arrayed in a dress of soft violet silk, that, apparently, had no other garment beneath, so perfect was the revelation of her figure. Beneath the figure it fell to the ground in a thousand folds, like a wave of smooth water bursting into foaming rapids. Round her neck was a garland of lustrous yellow pearls. On her head she wore a tiara of much smaller[118] dimensions than that worn on public occasions. Her pose was upright as an arrow. <div> <ANTIMG class="figleft" src="images/image_117_01.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="337" alt="The Laburnul." title="" /> <ANTIMG class="figleft" src="images/image_117_02.jpg" width-obs="219" height-obs="526" alt="The Laburnul." title="" /></div> I rose and bowed profoundly, and the goddess also bowing, requested me to be seated. "I have sent for you," said she, "to learn more about your country and to talk with you about ours. I am consumed with curiosity regarding the external world." "Your holiness," I replied, "permit me to say that your graceful condescension exceeds, if possible, your splendor. I am truly bewildered at the vastness of my good fortune in discovering a country ruled by so glorious a goddess." "And I also," said the goddess, "have learned that Bilbimtesirol is not the universe, but a very small portion thereof indeed. I am intensely interested in your accounts of the outer world. I am overpowered with the thought that the exterior surface of the planet is peopled with beings like ourselves, and that civilization, government, religion, art, manufacture, and social life are so greatly developed beneath a still more glorious sun than ours." "Did it never occur to your astronomers," I inquired, "that human activity might also pervade the outer sphere?"[119] "Our astronomers," said the goddess, "have long since decided that the conditions of climate on the exterior planet were too severe to allow human life to exist. They are aware that a great luminary gave the outer earth light by day, for our most daring aerial voyagers have frequently caught a glimpse of its light seen through the polar gulf. They argued that the equatorial regions were too hot, and the polar regions too cold, to support life, consequently the outer earth was a barren waste as desolate and uninhabited as your own satellite." "Would your holiness like to visit the exterior earth?" I boldly inquired. "If duty did not prevent me," she replied, "I would love to visit those far-off strange lands and peoples and see your sun and moon and all the stars!" From the goddess I first learned the precise location of Atvatabar. Lying exactly underneath the Atlantic Ocean it stretched east and west some two thousand miles, surrounded by the interior sea. There were other continents in Bilbimtesirol which we had already dimly seen spread upon the concave walls of the world around us. "You must come to see both Egyplosis and Arjeels," said her holiness, "but before you leave Tanje you must see my garden." "It must be a little paradise!" I exclaimed. "Let us go and see it now," she said, and, so saying, arose with a gracious gesture and led me out of the apartment. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_118.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="367" alt="The Green Gazzle of Glockett Gozzle." title="" /> The Green Gazzle of Glockett Gozzle.</div> I accompanied her holiness down the terrace leading to the lovely retreat. Curving walks led between banks of flowers[120] of all hues. There were avenues of tall shrubs not unlike rhododendrons, with the same magnificent bloom. Other plants, such as the firesweet, displayed a blinding wealth of yellow flowers. <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_119a.jpg" width-obs="300" height-obs="385" alt="Jeerloons." title="" /> Jeerloons.</div> The goddess led the way to the conservatory in the garden wherein were treasured strange and beautiful flowers and zoophytes illustrative of the gradual evolution of animals from plants, a scientific faith that held sway in Atvatabar. The goddess showed me a beautiful plant with large fan-shaped leaves from whose edges hung a fringe of heavy roses; long trailing garlands of clustering star-shaped flowers sprang from the same roots. The plant was a perfect bower of bliss, and while called the laburnul, might with greater propriety be styled the rose of paradise. <div class="figright"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_119b.jpg" width-obs="250" height-obs="336" alt="A Jeerloon." title="" /> A Jeerloon.</div> Another fern-like plant was in reality a bird flower, called the lilasure. It had the head and breast of a bird, from whose back grew roots and four small feathers resembling those of the peacock. Its tail resembled two large fronds of a fern, which served the animal for wings, for by their aid it flew through the air. There was also a flock of strange green-feathered creatures, resembling buzzards, called green gazzles, on whose heads grew sun-flowers. On either side, beneath their wings, were the plant roots by means of which they still sucked nourishment from the soil, as their bills were not yet perfectly developed. They belonged to a locality on the south coast of Atvatabar known as Glockett Gozzle. The lillipoutum was another wonderful[121] creature, half-plant half-bird. It represented the animal almost entirely evolved from the plant stage. A wreath of rootlets adorned the neck, but the most conspicuous features were the stork-like legs that terminated in roots with radiations like encrinital stems. The bird fed itself like a plant by simply thrusting its root-legs into the soft ooze of lake bottoms and slimy banks of rivers. Its tail was also a root possessing great absorptive powers. In shape the bird resembled a flamingo, and its feathers were of an old-rose color, mottled with lichen-green. A beard-like radiation of roots decorated its head, and its bill was extremely delicate. <div class="figright"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_120.jpg" width-obs="200" height-obs="628" alt="The Lillipoutum." title="" /> The Lillipoutum.</div> Such wonders as these intensified the glamor of the interior world. I was fast becoming bewildered with the intoxication of an environment of strange, abnormal creatures—unlike anything I had ever seen before. The goddess regarded her pets with the greatest interest, and was pleased at being the first to acquaint me with such living wonders of Atvatabar. "Your holiness," I said, "these creatures are so wonderful that unless I had actually seen them it would be impossible for me to believe in their existence." As I spoke, two strange bat-like forms flew toward us; they were flying orchids, known as jeerloons, with heart-shaped faces and arms terminating in wire-like claws. Their wing projections were bristling with suckers like the rays of a starfish. Altogether they were weird, uncanny creatures. The goddess caught one of them in her hands, and laughed at my excitement. "They will haunt you in your dreams," she exclaimed, "poor, pretty things!" "But now," she added, "let me show you a plant that is fast[122] becoming a brood of animals, both root and flower. It is the jugdul. Still rooted in the soil, strange faces are swelling in the mould, while the flower is a leaf surmounted by a weird, small head, the nasal organ of which is a ponderous proboscis. We do not know as yet what kind of animal life will evolve from the plant, but the botanists and physiologists of Atvatabar are agreed that at least two new species of animals will be developed when the evolution of the zoophyte is complete." <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_121.jpg" width-obs="300" height-obs="646" alt="The Jugdul." title="" /> The Jugdul.</div> I assured her holiness that I considered myself the most favored of men to be permitted to visit the sanctuary wherein the occult transmigration of life was being manifested. It was a rare experience! Just then the goddess directed my attention to a flying root resembling a humming-bird. It was the far-famed jalloast, the semi-evolved humming-bird of Atvatabar. Other similar beings, half-root, half-bird, were seen perched in a bower of tree-ferns, whose waxy green fronds fell like an emerald cascade about the jalloasts. From porcelain boxes suspended along the roof of the conservatory a perfect forest of strange plants depended, a species of zoophyte known as the yarp-[123]happy, which seemed to be a combination of ape and flower. Its peculiarly weird, ape-like face was covered with a hood, and from the open mouth of each animal the tongue protruded. From the neck of the animal three long leaves radiated, the two lower leaves in each case terminating in claw-like extremities, which gave a weird expression to the zoophyte. <div class="figright"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_122.jpg" width-obs="200" height-obs="570" alt="The Yarphappy." title="" /> The Yarphappy.</div> Right underneath these strange beings, there grew an immense quantity of spotted pouch-shaped plants, each having the head of a cat growing above the pouch. This peculiar zoophyte was known as the gasternowl. From either side of the junction of the cat-like head with the pouch radiated two speckled leaves. The tips of the ears terminated in frond-like plumes, and a peculiar plume like a crest surmounted the head. A strange root known as the crocosus was developed into a perfect animal that crawled with four legs upon the floor. The animal was not unlike the lizard, or a diminutive crocodile, with an immensely long neck, which it held erect. The neck terminated in a bulbous head, with an open, bill-shaped mouth, not unlike the mouth of a pelican, while right below the jaws there grew a root-[124]like appendage, that coiled around the neck. The animal possessed a root-like tail, and was a most interesting creature. To enumerate all the wonders of the conservatory of plant transmigration at Tanje would be impossible. I saw the jardil (or love-pouch), an orchid resembling a pouch, with the face of a child growing therein, from which radiated rootlets and jabots of spiral fronds. I also saw the redoubtable blocus, an animal resembling a jerboa, or kangaroo, whose only trace of plant existence was a few rootlets growing out of its back. The funny-fenny, or clowngrass, was a weed with veritable goblins growing on the stems. The goblins had long noses and wore high hats and lace collars, but were otherwise but plants with absorbent roots. They were so grotesque that I began to think that nature was laughing at me quite as much as I laughed at nature. <div> <ANTIMG class="figleft" src="images/image_123_01.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="278" alt="The Jalloast." title="" /> <ANTIMG class="figleft" src="images/image_123_02.jpg" width-obs="231" height-obs="263" alt="The Jalloast." title="" /></div> When leaving the conservatory I heard a chorus of tender voices like a band of spirits singing, whereupon the goddess directed my attention to a cluster of fairy girls that, like flowers, were growing upon the stem of a plant. It was a peculiarity[125] of these fairy creatures to sing every time their goddess passed by, her spiritual atmosphere quickening them into conscious life and song. I was fairly dazzled with such a tribute of love to my gracious companion, and were the fairy flowers not sacred things I would have borne them away to exhibit such a trophy to the outer world. <div class="figright"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_124.jpg" width-obs="300" height-obs="489" alt="The Gasternowl." title="" /> The Gasternowl.</div> This wonderful plant seemed more like the production of spirit power indulging in a weird fantasy of imagination, rather than an evolution of nature. It was a new experience to me to hear the little creatures sing in a tender chorus of adoration to the goddess and dance gleefully upon their stems. My guide fondled the strange creatures with her own fair fingers, and they seemed to me the greatest wonder I had yet beheld in Atvatabar. "These," said the goddess, "are gleroserals, and I would gladly give you a spray were it not that removal from their tender habitat would kill them. But here is a flower, half-bird, half-plant, that I will send you in a proper cage if you care for it." The zoophyte referred to was another bird plant that flew around the conservatory possessing the head and body of an eagle, the wings of a[126] butterfly and the tail of a plant. The plant-like appendage was composed of long beautiful sprays of graceful foliage, not unlike pine branches, that were curved into sinuous forms as the animal flew. It was known as the eaglon, and was without legs. I thanked the goddess for her precious gift, whereupon we left the conservatory. <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_125.jpg" width-obs="300" height-obs="409" alt="The Crocosus." title="" /> The Crocosus.</div> Wandering through thickets of roses whose burning blossoms swooned upon their stems, we came upon a thick carpet of verdure that surrounded a hidden lake of clear, cool water. The rocky basin of the lake had been sculptured by human hands. Its margin was in outline a bold pear-shaped curve, that also curved upon itself, formed by an immense chiselling of the fundamental rock. In a little harbor of cut rock lay a pleasure boat, a curiously-wrought shell of silver that was propelled by magnicity. The goddess entered the boat, bidding me follow her. We sat together on an ample couch in the stern of the boat underneath a silver canopy. Touching a button, the boat moved swiftly over the water. It was a scene of rapture! Gazing into the depths of the water I saw the bottom of the lake sculptured in immense masses of flowers of stone, like the roof of a Gothic cathedral, but a hundred times more luxuriant. Around and above us rose heights of blessedness filled with all the thousand ecstasies of leaf and flower. An islet bore a little pagoda that stood in the eternal noon a pillared jewel of stone, silent and beautiful. It was half concealed with festoons of creeping plants whose flowers were great globes of crimson, yellow and blue. There was around me—paradise, and beside me—ecstasy! "You are pleased with my garden?" said the goddess. "This must be the garden of Hesperides that our poets write of," I replied. "Here at last I have found the ideal life." The goddess reclined on the couch in an attitude of luxurious grace. Her every gesture was at once heroic and beautiful.[127] <div> <ANTIMG class="figright" src="images/image_126_01.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="122" alt="The Jardil, or Love-Pouch." title="" /> <ANTIMG class="figright" src="images/image_126_02.jpg" width-obs="156" height-obs="649" alt="The Jardil, or Love-Pouch." title="" /></div> "Tell me what your poets say of nature, life and love," said she; "do they ever sing the delights of hopeless love?" As the goddess uttered this last question I felt within me a strange delight. There sat beside me, floating on that mysterious wave, the idol of a great nation, the deity of its universal faith, a divinity of power, glory and beauty, laying aside spiritual empire to become the companion of a simple explorer of the internal world, her discoverer and her friend, by a most happy chance of fortune. As these thoughts swiftly ran through my brain, and before I had time to reply, music, soft, weird, intensely intoxicating, was blown from among the tempestuous bloom of the paradises. The melody seemed the holiest thrill of hearts communing in the rapture of love! To explain the sweetness of the moment is impossible—the goddess was so alluring and serene. She kept her own emotions in the background as the result of a proud devotion to duty, and yet I felt swathed with a soul that seemed to have found an opportunity worthy the expression of its life. A situation so daring, yet so tender, required an equally daring and reverent soul to meet it. I felt all its surpassing loveliness. "Our poets," I replied, "have written of love in all its phases, describing the most spiritual passions as well as the most lustful. In poetry love may be any phase of love, but the reality is a compound of lust and spirituality, being rooted both in body and soul." "Do your people," said the goddess, "never differentiate lust and love and obtain in real life only a spiritual romantic love such as we do in Atvatabar?" "We believe, your holiness," I replied, "that such a love as you refer to is only to be found in a spiritual state and is the secret of disembodied blessedness."[128] "You must see Egyplosis," said she, "ere you depart from us, and there learn the possibility of ideal love in actual life." "To discover such a joy," I replied, "will repay my journey to Atvatabar a thousandfold." We alighted from the boat on a rocky margin of the lake that led into a labyrinth of flowers. Here we wandered at will, discovering at every step new delights. Lyone was not only a goddess, but also the fond incarnation of a comrade soul. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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